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Casual reading suggests that floating gardens have long served a functional purpose in cultures around the world and that hydroponic gardens can be efficient and productive. That hydroponic gardens have also long been designed to be decorativexe2x80x94much like sculpturesxe2x80x94is reflected in U.S. Pat. Nos. 183,163 (1876) and 3,018,586 (1962). A wide range of floating hydroponic devices have been developed: some specifically for hydroponic structures, some for removing nutrient or growing food from natural water-bodies, and some to add decoration and aesthetically pleasing or useful vegetation to ponds or pools. Some designs intended for ponds (to now include pools, lakes or similar xe2x80x9clow energyxe2x80x9d aquatic environments) have many attributes of buoys or rafts, but with vegetation. Other designs are for submerged gardens of aquatic plants. These true aquatic plant designs include U.S. Pat. No. 2,283,472 (1942) having rock and soil with aquatic plants on a submerged tray suspended from a partially submerged raft and also include U.S. Pat. No. 4,487,588 (1984) that provided for a reusable submerged raftxe2x80x94again with suspended trayxe2x80x94which would be practical for growing aquatic plants in pot trays. Suspended trays for holding submerged, potted, true aquatic plants would also be good in decorative floating surface structures.
Floating gardens designed to aesthetically accent ponds include designs to accept soil. Examples include U.S. Pat. No. Des. 248,289 (1978) for a rectangular floating garden box with soil and U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,108 (1998) which is similar but which has a specific design allowing for varying polyhedral shapes and for cedar sidewalls to allow slow water flow into or out of the soil inside the box (and a high drain holes in case of heavy rain). Another design, U.S. Pat. No. 4,355,484 (1982), has an inset screen supporting the soil and allows free access to the soil by the water. Other plant floating designs based on soil (or equivalent media) also have a secondary purpose of removing nutrient from the pond. Examples include U.S. Pat. No. 4,133,141 (1979) which allowed roots to grow through soil into the water while at the same time allowing roots to also obtain some nutrient from a nutrient tank. More recently in the design of U.S. Pat. No. 5,799,440 (1998), roots are also allowed to grow through the soil and into the water to remove nutrient, but a mechanism to release oxygen to the water is integral to the design. There are other patented floating structures with additional decorative or functional purpose. A German patent, DE 2905759C2 (1980), describes a floating trigon encompassing a bag of soil which can be planted (each trigon can be attached one to another to create simple geometric shapes). A Japanese patent, JP 10191817A (1997), describes floating media-filled garden boxes that move up and down on fixed piersxe2x80x94much like floating docks but with segments not attached one to anotherxe2x80x94to stabilize shorelines and provide bird habitat.
Designs for floating standard pots are also seen. U.S. Pat. No. 2,531,562 (1950) envisioned buoyant collars to support one or more plant pots. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,838 (2000), a screen is added to protect the collar from damage by aquatic animals. These are stand-alone assemblies that can float free or be anchored.
Commercial hydroponic designs are readily adaptable to uses on a pond. A floating wafer in U.S. Pat. No. 2,175,113 (1939) had gauze supported seeds germinating and growing on a floating wafer (with or without a thin colloidal soil layer). Floating hydroponic rafts have two main mechanisms to allow roots to grow into water: a screen (or perforated plate) that is suspended between buoyant members or a buoyant perforated pad. U.S. Pat. No. 4,382,348 (1983) describes a porous plate with buoyant frame, while U.S. Pat. No. 3,927,491 (1975) describes a buoyant porous pad that can be inset into a larger buoyant pad as the plant grows. U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,454 (1986) describes a buoyant hydroponic device where a specifically designed porous plate-like pad has some buoyancy but is augmented by a buoyant frame. U.S. Pat. No. 5,010,837 (1991) has a buoyant pad for hydroponic purposes spanning a marine device. These tend to be good improvements on a basic theme, while U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,755 (2000) sandwiches several components into a unique design (most like a buoyant pad). At least one soil-less hydroponic design, U.S. Pat. No. 4,926,584 (1990), is designed to function as a stand-alone attractive floating ornament.
The basis of almost all wastewater treatment involves using organisms. Some wastewater treatment processes are extremely good at removing nutrients. A number of patents use macrophytic aquatic organisms to remove nutrients in waters passed through a device. An example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,516 (1994) which circulates waste water through a controlled basin of aquatic plants in floating containers (with a soil component). Directly removing nutrients from ponds and making use of aquatic plants such as duckweed are seen in a number of designs. A large complex tank (with an inflow and outflow) having both large rooted plants on the bottom and buoyant impoundments with floating rootless plants is described by U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,856 (1996). U.S. Pat. No. 4,536,988 (1984) describes a grid system that through controlling horizontal movementxe2x80x94spreads free-floating aquatic plants out over the surface and facilitates their harvest. U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,912 (1989) contains aquatic plants in envelopes suspended from floats.
Studying terrestrial vegetation flooded yearly at the Palisades Reservoir in Wyoming, I was not only impressed by the improvement in aesthetics from these terrestrial plants juxtaposed into an aquatic environment, I came to believe that their structural contribution to their new aquatic environment might equal their biotic and chemical contribution. Plant devices with maximum vertical and horizontal encroachment into a pond seem most likely to make a significant contribution to the aquatic environment in which they are placed. Horizontally significant devicesxe2x80x94including floating gardensxe2x80x94are more likely to be impressive at any distance from the pond, but they are also very difficult to physically handle. Assembling floating garden modules into larger shapes is more practical if any object of large scale is envisioned. Fortunately, because of the similarity of floating hydroponic designs to buoys and rafts, there are many conventional connectors available. Although snaps and ties may be the most practical way to join modules, using pegs as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,499 (1972) might provide a connection with fewer possibilities for entanglement (important because there will always be neglectful parents and children not prepared for water hazards they are allowed to encounter). Pegs and the receiving locations on the modules would need to modified to allow for clips or retention pins.
Modules would not only allow for greater scale, but allow gardens to be shaped to appearxe2x80x94at a distancexe2x80x94like some attractive pond feature as a water lily. This would be much different than the normal scale passable replica of a water lily as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,025,042 (2000).
There are multiple objects to this invention: create large floating gardens that can be aesthetically pleasing on a pond or similar water-body even before plants have matured; allow end users the freedom to create their own individual designs using their personal choices of size, color, shape, and planting; and provide a device with potential to significantly improve, within the water-bodies on which these are located, those qualities that can be valuable to people. To do this, two major types of modules are created. Floating structural modules provide a framework to create shapes and help position the finished gardens. Garden modules can have different shapes, etc. and will have different functional designs to allow for different planting desires and differing potential for interacting with the water-body. Generally, garden modules will attach to structural modules to create the overall shape. Garden modules will have a size that allows for planting prior to attachment so that handling is manageable. The end user can attach structural modules to structural modules and garden modules to structural modules to make larger and more intricate shapes of their own creation. The finished designs can float free, be attached to shore, be tethered to an anchored xe2x80x9clonglinexe2x80x9d running along the bottom, or anchored by other conventional means in place.